Category: links

there’s a linkspam in my soul

On By StephanieIn links5 Comments

A little bit magical negro, but really interesting: How the Peanuts Comic Strip Got Its First Black Character.

About Lentil As Anything, the pay as you feel chain, and how people are cheap. Stephanie adds: contact me privately for LAA gossip, which we shan’t publish cos it’s gossip from ex-employees of LAA.

We’re mad that this isn’t a No Award post: Buzzfeed goes to Canberra.

Regarding Side-Eye, at The Lifted Brow. No Award acknowledges that this is an excellent response to being called out on a thing, and that The Lifted Brow is choosing not to make money on a word that has come to English from AAVE is great. And this has led us to asking questions about the USAmericanisation of language. Stand by for later, I guess.

Relatedly, as Australians we might not know this term, and I think it’s one we need to know: Strange Fruit. You might know it as a Billie Holliday song, or a song that your favourite band covers. Do you know what that strange fruit is? Have you ever thought about they lyrics? Steph didn’t, until recently. It’s African-Americans having been lynched. They are hanging off trees.  It’s a song and poem about lynchings, and racism. Dead African-Americans are the strange fruit. Which is why it’s amazing that a bar (in the USA) named a cocktail Strange Fruit.

Speaking of: Why NBC didn’t need to make The Slap. This article veers a bit into the ‘woooo Aussie tv is so diverse’ territory, which obviously is untrue. It makes some great points about US tv, too. And also I would suggest she’s slightly incorrect: it’s not that US tv refuses to air non-US English programs; it just won’t air the ones set now. It will air the period dramas.

Somewhere in Sydney lie the remains of a man many South Africans regard with the same kind of reverence as Nelson Mandela.

SURPRISE: Spike in number of fatalities from shark attacks could be related to human population increase.

US thinktank asks if TAbbott is the most incompetent leader of an industrialised nation. Click through to the original piece as well, the comments are hilarious.

Sorry more US stuff, which defeats the purpose of NA’s purpose, but VERY IMPORTANT because we suffer this stuff in Australia, too: #chapelhillshooting. A white atheist fanatic shot three Muslim people. Reporting has been pretty terrible, all ‘a white man’ and ‘their religion may have had something to do with it.’ REALLY? Some media outlets are reporting it as ‘a parking dispute’, which is one way to refer to it when you can’t bring yourself to understand reality. The most common type of American Terrorist is a white man with a weapon and a grudge.

Bill Shorten spoke about Closing the Gap, and several Coalition MPs walked out in response. More thoughts at the Hoopla.

FOUR SPICE GIRLS SONGS YOU MAY NOT HAVE EVER HEARD?! !!!!

Something something lyrics linkspam

On By Liz BarrIn australia, conventions, fandom, gaming, links, politics, racism, transport4 Comments

What lies beneath: Sydney gets the southern hemisphere’s first body farm Australia

We Need To Talk About Fairy Bread – Please note that Stephanie has chosen to take “you can’t gentrify fairy bread” as a challenge. But also, what counts as gentrification? As a lower-middle-class person from Perth’s dodgy suburbs, is it gentrification if I take my favourite childhood snack and change it up?

The Future’s Been Here Since 1939: Female Fans, Cosplay and Conventions

Favourite pieces from this weeks’ AusPol: Abbott coins “doing an Abbott” to mean making a mistake; on the impacts of Sir Prince Phillip; on Adam Giles and the NT.

New site Future Black, decolonising design in Australia’s built environment.

One for stationery nerds and people with Khe Sanh earworms: The illustrious history of the yellow legal pad

The article title is misleading, but about how talk of Polyamory is white, when Polyamory isn’t. (Surpriiiise)

MAPS of the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Notes on the Melbourne Free Trams. We were just going to link this with no commentary, but it turns out Steph has some feelings. The entirety of the City of Perth is a Free Transit Zone (FTZ, for those from Perth), and it a) takes in a huge chunk of the tourist attractions, and b) is used a lot by workers who drive to work, and then would ordinarily take taxis or cars between meetings at different ends of the CBD. The FTZ and the ubiquity of the buses, as well as the existence of the Cats (buses that exist solely to do laps of different sections of the CBD), means they do get used. And don’t end up with the overcrowding issue that Melbourne’s CBD trams were already experiencing. I don’t have a solution, I’m just saying.

Attitude round-up

Last year, the ABC axed RampUp, its excellent site for discussion around disability.  A short time later, comedian/writer/disability advocate/all around hero Stella Young passed away.

That quote, ‘the only disability in life is a bad attitude’, the reason that’s bullshit is … No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshelf and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. – Stella Young

Now, the ABC is airing New Zealand show Attitude, a series of short documentaries about people with disabilities.  There is also also a crowdfunding project for an Australian version.

Unfortunately, Attitude doesn’t seem interested in prioritising the experiences and views of people with disabilities.  Here’s a round-up of posts about why it’s not great.

The problem with ABC’s new disability series, “Attitude”

Disability voices have to be heard to change attitudes

Disability media and Attitude TV — Carly Findlay discusses her hopes for the Australian version

Attitude series and the power and responsibility of portraying disability on mainstream TV

More favourable:

Graeme Innes, formerly Australia’s Disability Discrimination Commissioner, writes in favour of Attitude.  

I respect Innes a lot, but I strongly resent that Attitude seems to be entirely aimed at an able-bodied audience.

A different kind of attitude

(note: this post talks a lot about the so-called third world, and basically trades disability inspiration porn for poverty inspiration porn)

For my part, the whole concept of “attitude” is fraught.  My rheumatologist constantly praises me for improving my chronic conditions by having a good attitude, and it makes me quite uncomfortable.  It’s easy to exercise and practice self-care when you have a full-time job, a functional bike and access to an affordable public swimming pool.

And it’s distressing to realise that you’re being classified as a Good Patient just because you have these advantages — while, for example, your mother is classified as a Bad Patient because she has no energy to exercise, no access to a pool, and the public rheumatologist who sees her intermittently assumed she was an alcoholic.  (She’s a teetotaller.)

And I don’t even have that great an attitude.  “Yes, I have multiple chronic illnesses.  It’s very dull.  Let’s get on with it.”  That’s me on a good day.  In a bad week, I can and will bore everyone I know with my incessant complaints about being in pain — but my rheumatologist doesn’t see that.

Adam Baldwin/Supanova/GamerGate round-up

Adam Baldwin is an actor, best known for Firefly, who also holds some very conservative opinions, coined the term “GamerGate”, and facilitated the doxxing of game developer Zoe Quinn.  Here’s a handy round-up of his behaviour.

Supanova is one of the very few pop culture expos in Australia. Adam Baldwin will be a guest at the Sydney and Perth events in June. Suffice to say, lots of people are unhappy about this.  There is a petition to revoke his invitation.  (You should sign it!)

People discussing the matter have been doxxed, abused, driven from their preferred social media platforms, and generally treated badly.  (Liz got off lucky with some rather tedious mansplaining.  Nice try, guys, but I work with lawyers.)

Supanova, meanwhile, has engaged in some epic fence-sitting, also some general rudeness, also tried to manipulate a feminist comedian into supporting them. (The original article, published in Fairfax’s Daily Life, has been removed; the link is to an archived version.)

A summary.

The thing is, this isn’t about Baldwin’s politics.  Hell, Star Trek: Voyager‘s Roxanne Dawson quotes Bill O’Reilly on her Twitter, but I wouldn’t say she’d be an inappropriate guest at a nerd convention.  It’s Baldwin’s behaviour, and that of the people he supports, that’s the problem here.

As a small, fat, feminine and female nerd, I would not feel safe at an event as attractive to misogynist bullies as Supanova with Baldwin as a guest.  And I wouldn’t want to give money to a company that engineers that situation.

Baldwin himself is easy to ignore and avoid — I’ve attended a whole lot of Supanovas, and accidentally encountered a guest once. But the men he attracts?  Most are just keyboard warriors, mired in self-hatred, lashing out at women to compensate for their problems.  But as Brianna Wu’s experience would attest, some are dangerous.  And Baldwin feeds them. That’s why I don’t want Adam Baldwin to be a paid guest at Supanova.

Linkspam with you in the comfort of a lounge room in suburbia

On By Liz BarrIn australia, linguistics, links, politics

The Vine counts down ways women ruin everything.  With bonus puppies!

Peta Credlin has become a lightning-rod for discontent driven by fear

We at No Award are quite intrigued by the fact that, when Julia Gillard was an unpopular prime minister with a tough, unpopular male chief of staff, she was demonised, whereas Tony Abbott is an unpopular prime minister with a tough, unpopular female chief of staff … once again the woman is demonised.

[Disclaimer: If the current Australian government was the subject of a satirical ABC comedy in the style of The Thick of It — and how we wish that were true — Peta Credlin would be Liz’s problematic fave.  She’s not quite Malcolm Tucker in a skirt, but only because she’s not famous for creative swearing.]

Skills shortage for Auslan interpreters

Melbourne Nylex clock turns on, makes mysterious return to life

Nylex Clock/Skipping Girl Sign OTP, y/y?

A Meat Processing Professional Reviews Snowpiercer

Paying to Work: The Perth Film Network and The Action Film Plan

The Perth Film Network’s latest venture, called “The Action Film Project,” is what appears to be either a particularly exploitative form of crowd-funding, or an unethical business scheme masquerading as a golden opportunity for aspiring filmmakers.

Satire and Scandal: Revisiting Frontline

Interesting long reads

Cicada: Solving the Web’s Deepest Mystery

Or, an episode of Elementary and an amazing premise for a YA novel in one!  Link nicked from Natalie Luhrs of Pretty Terrible, but shared here again because it is AMAZING.

Can the Next Generation of Morticians Breathe Life Into the Death Industry?

Welcome to a Liquid Modern Queensland & Why Tony Fitzgerald’s in Despair

A dense but rewarding discussion of corruption and neo-liberalism in Liz’s home state of Queensland.

And if it’s not region-locked for you, Liz totally recommends Chris Marsters’ The Moonlight State, the 1987 Four Corners expose that helped bring down the Bjelke-Petersen government.  It has some gratuitous strip club footage, but is brilliant and valuable nonetheless.

Why People Hate Tess Munster (And Other Happy Fat People)

invasion day needs a linkspam

On By StephanieIn links

You may know it as Survival Day, or a public holiday for celebrating a genocide.

Nakkiah Lui writes at the Guardian: Australia Day is a time for mourning, not celebration.

Eugenia Flynn at Crikey: Friend or Foe of Indigenous Culture? Jessica Mauboy as Australia Day Poster Girl.

The day I don’t feel Australian? That would be Australia Day. Chelsea Bond over at The Conversation.

Glen LeLievre - Nothing But Bush
Glen LeLievre – Nothing But Bush

Over the weekend there was some shit going down in the #DearWhitePeople tag, with a whole heap of American (including African-American) policing of Australian Indigenous identities. (It is still pretty anger-making in there, and it sucks for @ebswearspink) I hope that there will be some write ups or something, but it’s not something Steph feels qualified to talk about (though an aside: this is in large part why No Award exists. Because we hate being forced to work through a USA social justice paradigm).

If you’re in Melbourne, Steph is going to some Invasion Day stuff:

There’s a smoking ceremony in the Tianjin Gardens at 10, and then a rally and march from 10:30 from Parliament house, because January 26 is a day of mourning and resistance. This rally is a resistance to colonialism and genocide.

Following that, there’s a festival in Treasury Gardens – Share the Spirit. It’s a festival to celebrate indigenous Australian culture and tradition.

Steph says: There’s rallies all over the country. Please go to one. We are living on indigenous land. I grew up on Noongar land, and I’m living on Wurudgeri land. My personal ancestors might not have had anything to do with the genocides of years past, but by staying silent I contribute to everything that continues. It is the very least I can do.

gimme another linkspam, oh my baby

On By StephanieIn environmental stuff, links, Uncategorized

Important and relevant to the interests of No Award: at Spoonflower, an Australian cities design contest. There’s some racist poo in there, but mostly it’s hilarious fun.

The 7 Wonders of Reservoir.  (Liz is moving in a few months, and has given serious thought to the fact that she can afford a two-bedroom house in Reservoir.  Only the fact that she neither owns a car nor drives is keeping her in the inner suburbs.)

At the Guardian, on Boko Haram.

You can submit poetry at The Lifted Brow!

Steph enjoyed this profile of Wayne Denning at BRW – Denning got Australian Indigenous talent onto Sesame Street.

A teaser at Kill Your Darlings, about the absence of cricket in national literature.

This Stormtrooper was saved from a deadly snake bite by his Storm trooper armour. #straya

And multiple Australian men have been arrested for driving motorised eskies.  #heroes

The Medicare rebate slash we better not have: Latika Bourke at the Guardian; Sophie Scott at the ABC.

Official No Award stance: Do not sing the National Anthem on Invasion Day (known legally as Australia Day).  Can you even. This is beyond even the cultural cringe. (Steph had a moment when she first opened that article where she thought ‘NADC’ said ‘NAIDOC’ and she was like WHY WOULD NAIDOC SUPPORT THIS. Don’t worry. She was wrong.) And a thing at En Passant.

Australia’s ridiculously terrible Human Rights Commissioner thinks the Racial Discrimination Act is essentially censorship.

The horror of a pineapple of clowns descending upon Sydney.

Manus: Security guards attack Manus compounds and are total shits.

‘Indigenous Australian’ was one of the most read Wiki pages of 2014.

Language Tips for Cis Feminists Speaking on Trans Issues: Liz very much wishes she had read this before doing the Ancillary Justice post, and unreservedly apologises to anyone she offended.

NASA has released the world’s largest photograph, a high-definition panoramic view of the Andromeda Galaxy.  Warning: may trigger existentialist crisis.

Translating Shakespeare in China:

The other Chinese favorite, perhaps less expected, has been The Merchant of Venice, which debuted as a silent film in Shanghai in 1927. Called The Woman Lawyer, the film highlighted what has particularly interested Chinese audiences about the play, even up to the present: its proto-feminist heroine Portia, who dresses as a man and brilliantly defends Antonio in a gripping courtroom drama. That scene later became, and still remains, a staple of the Chinese middle school curriculum. The Western focus on Jewish-Christian relations means little to Chinese audiences compared with the way that Shakespeare dramatizes a classic battle of Confucian ethics, between li (profit motive) and yi (loyalty to friends).

(Liz would argue against the suggestion that China is unique in using Shakespeare to advance its ideology!  But it’s an interesting article nonetheless.)

The free market won’t stop climate change, but its failure is inspiring the people who will. A comic at by Sam Wallman at The Nib.

No Awarding Around:

Steph’s post from last week on Appropriation and Racism in Melbourne Restaurants has been linked eleven trillion times, so you should definitely read that. There will be a follow-up post eventually to tell you all the restaurants she has been told about following that.

Cranky Ladies of History, featuring fiction by Liz and Steph, is up on GoodReads!  It’s not available for pre-order yet, but keep an eye out.

post-chrimbo post-racial lols

On By StephanieIn links, media3 Comments

Hello No Award.

Today we would like to talk to you about Australia’s racism, or what we here at No Award refer to as Australia’s post-racial lols.

Here’s a terrible opinion piece at The Australian titled ‘No contraception, no dole’.

IF a person’s sole source of income is the taxpayer, the person, as a condition of benefit, must have contraception. No contraception, no benefit.

This is not an affront to single mothers or absent fathers, or struggling parents. Such a measure will undoubtedly affect strugglers, it undoubtedly will affect Aboriginal and Islander people in great proportions, but the idea that someone can have the taxpayer, as of right, fund the choice to have a child is repugnant.

Are you laughing? I’m laughing. In horror. This opinion piece is repugnant (thanks, pal) and also amazing, in that it accurately pinpoints who will be targeted but uses that classic argument, ‘I’m not racist’ or ‘I’ve got a brown friend who says it’s okay.’

Eugenics is never okay. Saying people who are poor can’t procreate is eugenics. Saying this policy will impact ATSI people and they won’t be able to procreate is eugenics. That it can list things that might contribute to terrible domestic situations and say the answer is contraception, rather than government services, counselling, and support; that’s eugenics. Woooo good SOSE lesson, everyone.

(Do not read the comments)

*

Channel Seven loses legal battle after ‘racist portrayal’ of tribe.

Ignore those quotation marks, as if maybe it wasn’t a racist portrayal but Ch7 sure has lost the legal battle. Because it sure was a racist portrayal.

Raffaele claimed that the Suruwaha believe that children born with birth defects or born to a single mother “are evil spirits and should be killed in the most gruesome way possible”.

“They take these poor little innocent babes out into the jungle to be eaten alive by the wild beasts or jaguars or they bury them alive, this is one of the worst human rights violations in the world,” he said.

In his federal court judgement Justice Buchanan backed Acma’s original report when he said he found the statements made by Noonan and Raffaele “would be likely to provoke or perpetuate intense dislike and serious contempt of and for the Suruwaha tribe and its members on account of their practices and beliefs”.

Here at No Award we talk a lot about representation and culture, and that’s not just because we like media (we love media). It’s because representation matters, as Buchanan J has handily summed up here. Attitudes are influenced by representation, especially when we’re talking about representation of a minority. It’s irresponsible and basically a hate crime to act any other way.

*

Reading Waltzing Matilda in Aboriginal History on Salty Hair:

I’m not really much of a Banjo Paterson fan — he comes across as a sort of discount store Rudyard Kipling, and I’ve never really liked his poetry either. But when you skim through his work it jumps out that Waltzing Matilda is a really, really odd poem. And the idea I can’t get out of my head is that it’s not really about a minor skirmish between white pastoralists at all: it’s about this country’s founding conflict between black and white.

Roll around in Australia’s racist history, my friends. Understand it. Remember it. Know that it’s still here with us, infecting us every day.

Relatedly, you should be following #blackfullafacts, even if you’re not Australian, definitely if you’re not Indigenous Australian. Some of it’s fun knowledge, some of it’s terrible knowledge, all of it’s important knowledge of Indigenous Australians.

We’re never post-racial. We’re racist, quokkas.

Happy New Year.

MRYCHRIMBO it’s a capitalist rort

On By StephanieIn links, Uncategorized

Welcome to a four day weekend (for some) and some public holiday pay (for others) and Christmas (for also some), Bilbies and Quokkas and visitors from across the seas! Stephanie is in Perth, and Liz is in Melbourne, and from 3500 kilometres apart we bring you this Christmas Public Holiday No Award Specialganza, before lunch and then the traditional nap.

Alleged pie fight sours Christmas party – from Liz’s home state, a tale of drunken work Christmas party pie assault shenanigans. No Award does not endorse assault but does endorse hilarity.

Important science: Christmas puddings put to the sobriety test; and because we (Stephanie) are scientists here at NA: the actual study at the MJA.

At The Conversation: Families we choose: an Australian gay and lesbian Christmas. (Please note that No Award does not endorse headlines that exclude other queer peoples)

Stephanie saw some of these today! The Mooja tree! Call to embrace world’s biggest mistletoe, the native Christmas tree.

A No Award pet hate: dumping things at Op Shops. Remember that if you wouldn’t give it to a friend, you shouldn’t give it to an op shop, because it costs millions of dollars for those oppies to dispose of your shit.

A case of Christmas workplace bullying, possibly by a superior: How cruel Kris Kringle ruined my public service career.

In tales of why capitalism is bad: Yiwu’s ‘red factories’: where the world’s Christmas decorations are made. This link has been doing the rounds as it’s recent and on the Shanghaiist, about factory conditions, capitalism, and the shit that’s used on cheap Christmas decorations.

A handy fact sheet from Alzheimer’s Australia, Including people with Alzheimer’s at Christmas.

Australia’s transplanted Christmas will never stop being surreal, which just keeps showing how little it belongs. Steph isn’t sure how she feels about the chat about childhood being a time of magic and how adults cram all the magic in to childhood before we lose it, which is frankly bull because Chinese adults believe in magic their whole lives, have you met her, but she likes the rest of it. (Related, Christine Anu has released an album of Christmas songs with no mention of snow, Island Christmas, which Steph desperately wants to listen to, because it seems relevant to interests of colonisation and what is australian and identity and etc)

Don’t forget for one second that the Prime Minister’s gift to us this Christmas was a shithead for Minister for Social Services and severe funding cuts to a number of organisations including those providing homeless and disability services.

And finally, a Christmas message we’ve stolen from Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin, via Mr First Dog on the Moon, because No Award maintains that Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin is modelled on Stephanie.

brenda, stolen from mr on the moon but can she truly be stolen when she is probably actually steph?
brenda, stolen from mr on the moon but can she truly be stolen when she is probably actually steph?

six white boomers, racing linkspam through the blazing sun

On By StephanieIn links, Uncategorized

The Troll Hunters – exposing hate online.

Well, you know, it is very important to do the right thing by families and households,” Mr Abbott replied. “As many of us know, women are particularly focused on the household budget and the repeal of the carbon tax means a $550 a year benefit for the average family.

AUSPOL: Tony’s top achievement as Minister for Women in 2014 was the repeal of the Carbon Tax; Scott Morrison is a “decent human being” and is going to be Minister for Social Services and my favourite commentary is here.

The Lego farmer blogs about life on an Aussie farm in the Riverina. I’m linking to the ABC story because it’s got the tweets too.

Do you like Indiana Jones? Why? He’s basically a validation of white colonialism and the West’s terrible habit of stealing things that don’t belong to them. So it’s great to read that the National Gallery of Australia is investigating ownership of 54 items after returning a stolen one to India. NGA bought it for (AUD?)5 million and returned it anyway. Good work!

A great post on Strange Fruit, the racism of feminism, and music and Annie Lennox: The Unbearable White Ignorance of Annie Lennox at Media Diversified.

Are you reading Black Australia? If you’re not, you should be. Just this week they posted about cultural protocols and sorry business, and a whole bunch of really great links. Highly recommend to all Australians, both ATSI and not ATSI.

A post about#illridewithyou by the amazing Tessa, who sort of started it all.

And #illridewithyou Redux, in which Tessa talks about racial identity (hers), white guilt, accusations of (she is but is not white), and asks why we need permission to do great things?

Once again, who is allowed to instigate change?

That’s the wrong question. How about;

Why should anyone wait for your approval to act?

As far as I’m concerned, you naysayers can go sit on a pineapple and spin.

To quote a wise friend and fellow biracial, you’re better than this. Substandard criticism is vexing.

In Stephanie news, I translated a Tang Dynasty poem for Catwoman 37. You can read it, and also buy the issue when it comes out on Wednesday. So great. Much Chinese.

How A Nickelodeon Cartoon Became One of the Most Powerful, Subversive Shows of 2014.  Or, Liz’s main fandom that’s not about an alien in a police box done good.

North Korea: Not Funny.

North Korea is not funny. It is hard to imagine a comparable comedy emerging about quirky Islamic State slavers or amusing and “complicated” genocidaires in the Central African Republic. The suffering in question is happening now, as I write.

The day will soon come when North Koreans are finally free, and liberated concentration camp survivors will have to learn that the world was more interested in the oddities of the oppressors than the torment of the oppressed.

Stella Young, disability activist, writer, comedian and all around heroine, sadly passed away recently.  No Award admired her fiercely, but didn’t know her.  But we’re fairly sure she would have had something to say about the plan to yarnbomb a wheelchair ramp in her honour.

Just so we’re clear, a layer of wool is not going to make a wheelchair ramp accessible.  More like the opposite.  Yarn bombing is terrible anyway, but covering an accessibility device is just … Liz doesn’t even have words.

(And it’s not just ramps!  When Liz is tired and in pain and grumpy, the last thing she wants is to find that all the seats are covered in mouldy, wet wool.  Looking at you, Moreland City Council.)

The event was scheduled for Saturday, and the Facebook page seems to have vanished, so maybe it didn’t go ahead.  Let’s hope not, anyway.

How Jessica Mitford Exposed a $48M Scam from America’s Literary Establishment

What the world needed more than anything: I Am Bread – a game in which you play a slice of bread trying to reach the toaster.  Obviously, this is just another example of the game industry’s ongoing exclusion of the gluten intolerant.  But it’s also kind of brilliant.

Nice Doesn’t Pay the Bills – as occasional contributors to The Toast, we at No Award were dismayed to learn last week that their contracts are a bit dodgy.  (How did we not know that before?  Shut up, we’re Australians working in a US market.)  Natalie Luhrs points out the implications of the problems, and the assumption that just because Mallory Ortberg and her team are really cool people, that means The Toast will always be a really cool market.

The lady vanishes – did someone say reprints of a once-popular, now obscure Melbourne author whose proto-feminist murder mysteries are back in print?  This is from a few months ago, but Liz only just discovered Murder in the Telephone Exchange yesterday.  Why yes, she is now nagging her library to get all of June Wright’s books.

 

i saw linkspam kissing santa claus

On By StephanieIn links

Remote area unemployed face punishment for ‘passive welfare behaviour’. That title is basically nonsense but what the article really says is that unemployed in the country (most likely indigenous people) will be forced to work harder for benefits, in areas where work may be more difficult to come by. Awesome. Great job, Australia. You’re the best.

Need to do some art at your computer right now? SPIROGRAPH.

Obviously No Award has feelings about climate change. No Award also has feelings about Greenpeace, and they’re not amazing: Greenpeace apologises for Peru stunt that may’ve harmed Nazca Lines. A Greenpeace protest was poorly thought out, resulting in potential damage of an archaeological thingy that’s 2000 years old.

Christian Leaders Strip-Searched Over Political Prayer Vigil.  Liz has been watching Love Makes A Way, a multi-religious (but mostly Christian) movement that protests against our asylum seeker policy by praying in politicians’ electoral offices and getting arrested a lot.  (As a general rule, Liz does not approve of prayer as public performance, but this is one of those times where an exception is made.)

This week, the protesters were not only arrested, but strip searched, denied access to legal advice, and had their Bibles confiscated.  The strip search and denial of legal rights happens a lot in Australia, and I don’t want to seem like I’m particularly up in arms because it’s happening to middle class white people, but it was … surprising and unexpected.  And confiscating the Bibles is another degree of bizarre all together.

Anyway, Liz supports Love Makes A Way, and also hopes that this has a side effect of drawing attention to problems with treatment of prisoners in general.  (Also, Liz has been known to say snarky things about Pentecostals, prosperity gospels and hypocrisy, and would do well to remember that a couple of Pentecostal leaders were arrested this week.)

Stella Young passed away on the weekend. She was loud and honest and an amazing advocate for people with disabilities, especially young ones. She told some incredibly graphic sex jokes. Here is a list of great things and articles both about her and by her.

No Award encourages you to spotlight writers at The Butter.

SFF: The next new wave of science fiction will be Chinese (yesssss); Move over HP Lovecraft, fantasy writers of colour are coming through (yessssss).

At the Conversation, Lonely over Christmas: a snapshot of social isolation in the suburbs.

Road rage committed by horse-drawn carriages in Melbourne (No Award is against horse drawn carriages).

Gift guides for hairy-legged, bra-burning misandrists:

Rebel Girls Holigay Gift Guide 2014

The Feminist Killjoy Gift Guide

The Ultimate Misandrist Holiday Gift Guide

A Spinster’s Holiday Gift Guide: What To Buy For The Woman Who Loves Solitude (Liz draws the line at The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, which is interesting, and also the only pop history on the subject in the English language, but is also not very good.  Sorry.) (Steph says, don’t be sorry. It’s a terrible book that I would have thrown across the train but I was in a carriage of the Beijing subway at the time on my way to work, so that seemed like a bad idea)

it’s starting to look a lot like linkspam

On By StephanieIn links, Uncategorized3 Comments

Here at No Award, we embrace and promote conscious consumption (and Steph is always willing to talk about it because that’s her job and she loves it). In The Bottom Line: Patagonia, North Face, and the Myth of Green Consumerism, you can have a read about winter sporting wear Patagonia’s business practice of minimising consumer purchasing as part of an overall strategy to make our society less disposable. BASICALLY THE BEST. It might not work as a strategy right now, but it’s pretty great.

Victorian Labor wins election by stealing the Greens’ strategy; also swears about Australian media and Lolstralia doesn’t blink.

This Idiot Senator Wore A High-Vis Mining Vest In Parliament And Got Torn To Bits By Everybody.  This is old, but totally worth it.

It is worth noting at this point that Macdonald, who is both Australia’s longest-standing current Senator and a fully-grown man, is perfectly happy to stand in a chamber of Parliament and loudly advertise that he is literally sponsored by a corporation.

The terrible psychological consequences of our border policy for the naval personnel who implement it.

New Atheism, Old Empire – examining the way New Atheism just coincidentally overlaps with fascism and imperialism.  Warning for violent language in the quotes.

Tansy Rayner Roberts asks, Does Sex Make Science Fiction Soft?  A look at SF’s traditional wariness of romance, the division between “soft” and “hard” SF, sexism and intersectionality, and there’s also a reading list which might even inspire Liz to try once again to read romance.

It’s an inter-network battle to the death as newsreaders take up arms in … are Hunger Games comparisons considered tasteless in the wake of ABC cuts?  The important thing is that No Award is Team Lee Lin Chin.

30 Years of Hating Alison Ashley

On many levels Hating Alison Ashley is a farce of character. Erica Yurken is rude, self-centred and intoxicatingly megalomaniacal. Her delusions of grandeur are completely at odds with her life at Barringa East Primary School – a school of such disrepute that Erica laments its sole mention in the local newspaper, which occurred when a classroom burned down prompting the headline ‘Arson Suspected at Barringa East Primary’. In Erica’s Barringa East we see shades of Porpoise Spit, the depression-inducing town from the classic Australian film Muriel’s Wedding.

(a) I can’t believe Hating Alison Ashley is 30 years old; (b) that means it was already eight years old when I first read it, yet it felt totally fresh to my childhood eyes; (c) let’s pretend the movie — which transplanted the story to a high school and featured my nemesis Delta Goodrem in the title role — never happened; (d) I didn’t know that Robin Klein has suffered a stroke and can no longer speak or write — that’s very sad; (e) with details like Erica’s mother being a proud welfare cheat, I wonder how modern kids perceive this book?

Seymour Skinner asks himself,

The Best of Mike Bowers’ Brick Senate – Senate rules limit photography.  So The Guardian makes do with Lego.  Obviously.