We had a week off posting! But we are back now, and posting will continue through the end of year public holiday stretch. Mostly. Today’s music is The Northern Folk, an 11-piece indie group from Albury who Steph saw play at a festival last week.

Are you going to be in Melbourne next June? Do you have opinions, ideas and arcane facts stored in your brain? Welp, get yourself over to Continuum’s website and see if you want to sign up for any panels! Liz is co-programming, but she promises it won’t be wall-to-wall cephalopods.

Ask A Manager invites readers to share their weird office holiday stories

A wonderful essay about pop music: Towards joy

A library without librarians is a just a shed full of books

No Award is a pro-bay leaf blog, but Liz appreciates this writer’s dedication to hating it: The Vast Bay Leaf Conspiracy

Key quote:

UUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Books on the Rail: the guerrilla library infiltrating Melbourne’s Metro

Awkward to be the Australian PM right now, huh: ‘Absolutely inappropriate’: Malcolm Turnbull blasts teachers’ refugee protest

Prime minister links campaigning to poor results in international rankings, saying ‘teachers should be focused on teaching’

Will the plebiscite nightmare ever end: Material bought for same-sex marriage vote

In NYT: I Am Ashamed to Be Australian

Asylum seekers are usually traumatized by long, dangerous journeys. What makes the situation on Manus exceptional is that the Australian government is inflicting even more trauma. My fellow Australians have allowed this to happen; we elect our leaders and we must take responsibility for their actions. But we don’t. Instead we’ve allowed them to use the plight of the Manus refugees, as well as refugee families on the island nation of Nauru, as props in a political power struggle. We’ve allowed ourselves to see the refugees as queue jumpers, as undesirable, as criminals. We appear to have lost touch with our humanity.

Apogee Journal: #NoDAPL #StillHere: Native and Anti-Colonial Craft Against Dispossession

ETU speaks out against racism and the far right

“No other prick was doing it”, said Peter Simpson, Electrical Trades Union (Queensland and NT) state secretary, explaining why the union has launched a new campaign video, Stand Up Against Racism.

Embedded misogyny: the academic erasure of women

The experience prompted several issues. Most disturbing was that so many of us – strong, articulate feminist academics – had just sat there, mute, polite, civil, while this man spoke of three artistic fields in such a way to erase women’s contributions entirely. Why didn’t more of us ask questions, or storm out? We had the numbers on our side in this particular gathering (women outnumber men in the creative writing field). The Professor’s talk not only made women invisible but it silenced those present – why? Was it because of the work so many good women had put into the conference organising, and our desire to not make trouble for them, to not be those feminist ‘killjoys’? Was it because academia is so hierarchical and the ‘authority’ we bestow on senior white male academics seems impossible to challenge even when their work is so obviously flawed? Or were we so exhausted, angry and frustrated by the continual dismissal of women that we did not have the energy to fight?

Aleppo: ‘We can do no more’: rescue services in Aleppo plead for international help; When Steph went to bed on Thursday night this was live but it seems to have been paused for now: Aleppo evacuation operation has begun, Red Cross confirms – live updates

Don Dale detention royal commission (Stephanie has chosen to alter the full title of this article as it mostly detracts from the important words that Dylan Voller is speaking to us)

Grassroots Business

There was a fire in Footscray earlier this week, and a number of buildings burnt down, including the Saigon Market and the area where the Les Twentyman Foundation was based.

The Les Twentyman Foundation “believes every young person deserves a future free of poverty, abuse, violence, discrimination and isolation” and does this through a heap of services like crisis accommodation, employment pathways, and youth leadership programs.

In the fire, amongst all the other resources lost, were a heap of Christmas gifts, school supplies for 2017, and all the resources used to administer the ‘Back to School’ program which directly supports up to 450 Victorian school kids. You can donate to the Les Twentyman foundation here.